The Toronto International Film Festival can make you feel a lot of things: excited, starstruck, annoyed and tired, to name a few. For many people, especially in the weeks leading up to the festival, that feeling is overwhelmed. With nearly 400 films on offer this year, TIFF isn’t lacking in variety. But for members of the public hoping to attend just a handful of screenings, deciding which ones to buy tickets for is daunting.
That’s where TIFFBOT comes in.
TIFFBOT recommends films depending on the criteria you provide. It was created by two Toronto companies, digital product agency TWG and creative communications firm 88 Creative, and launched on August 23 to coincide with the online release of TIFF’s film schedule.
“The problem with most things these days is curation,” says Rob Kenedi of TWG. “There’s so much content coming at you, and you have to decide what you want to do. It gets overwhelming and TIFF for me has always been like this. I want somebody who has bothered to go through all the work to tell me what I should go see.”
So Kenedi and his colleagues built TIFFBOT. A bot is basically a computer designed to understand what you’re trying to say, figure out your intention, wade through all the information out there and give you an answer back. They’re typically conversational, as in, they talk to you in a humanistic sort of way. Apple’s Siri is a voice-triggered example. If you ask Siri a question about anything, she’ll try to give you the answer.
TIFFBOT works similarly, but only for films being shown during TIFF.
“You can talk to it in terms of genre,” Kenedi explains. “You can also mention if there are stars you want to see. If they’re not in the picks of the movies we selected, it’ll show you a nice little GIF, and we’re going to improve it to offer you other selections.”
For now, TIFFBOT only works on Facebook Messenger, which can be used without a Facebook account on the app. The bot introduces itself and asks, “What kind of film would you like to see?” It understands words like: horror, comedy, drama, documentary, scary and funny. It also recognizes words like “subtitles” and names such as Werner Herzog and Nate Parker.
When I ask it for a horror movie, TIFFBOT tells me about the Midnight Madness program and suggests Greg McLean’s The Belko Experiment. It also provides links to other useful resources, such as movie trailers, director interviews and TIFF’s ticketing site.
When I say I want to see a drama that’s also a foreign film, the helpful TIFFBOT recommends Graduation by Romanian director Chrstian Mungiu. “Mungiu’s previous two films were brutal experiences that brought the struggles of his Romanian homeland to the world stage. Expect more of the same ruthlessness here, I suppose.”
TIFFBOT has a pretty good sense of humour, too.
Kenedi says the team at TWG is actively working on the app. They’re monitoring the keywords users are typing and adjusting the bot accordingly. By the end of the week, a total of 55 films will be included. The curated list of movies came from TWG’s resident film buff Peter Strauss, who makes it a point to sort through all of TIFF’s offerings each year.
“At its core, we still needed some human curation to whittle down the list,” Kenedi admits. “Maybe next year, we’ll partner with TIFF, expand the bot and do it in a broader, deeper way. This year, it’s just a fun way to get people interested and offer something of service.”
michelled@nowtoronto.com | @michdas
